Category Archives: Senior Care

STAT News reported on the pioneering geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas and the 330-square-foot, plywood-boned home he calls a Minka. The structure is warm, light, and surprisingly roomy, in a studio loft sort of way. Four oversize windows look out onto the lake, a shed-style roof rising to the view. In the back corner, across from a big bathroom compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, sits a full-size bed. On the other side of a plumbing-filled wall from the bathroom is a kitchen and countertop, made from Ikea components. (The term “Minka” has Japanese origins, as a traditional house for rural dwellers, typically those of modest financial means.)

The idea sounds, in one sense, simple: create and market small, senior-friendly houses like this one and sell them for around $75,000, clustered like mushrooms in tight groups or tucked onto a homeowner’s existing property so caregivers or children can occupy the larger house and help when needed. The initiative has turned Thomas into a rare breed: the physician homebuilder, and it pits him not only against the nursing home industry, but also the housing industry, with its proclivity for bigger and bigger spaces.

“I spent my career trying to change the nursing home industry,” he said. “But I’ve come to realize it’s not really going to change. So now what I’ve got to do is make it so people don’t need nursing homes in the first place. That what this is about.”

Thomas wants to help people grow older on their own turf and terms, while helping spare them the fiscal and physical stress of maintaining homes. In so doing, he hopes to shield them from the mouth of a funnel that too often summons elders to a grim march — from independent living, to assisted living, to nursing homes, to memory units, and to the grave.

Thomas said he’s less interested in growing wealthy from the idea than in changing the culture of senior housing.

Reuters reported that nursing home landlord Quality Care Properties Inc has agreed to cut rents for HCR ManorCare. However, ManorCare, a national for-profit nursing home chain, already owes more than $300 million in back rent and acknowledged it will struggle to pay even the reduced amount, according to a regulatory filing. Toledo, Ohio-based ManorCare, with more than 250 skilled nursing and assisted living facilities across the United States, is struggling as government Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates fail to keep pace with rising costs. Quality Care, a real estate investment trust (REIT), relies on the nursing home chain for more than 90 percent of its revenues.

Quality Care was spun off in 2016 by larger REIT HCP Inc, which had acquired the ManorCare assets from private equity firm Carlyle Group LP in 2010 for $6.1 billion. Quality Care shares fell 3.4 percent to $13.54 on Tuesday.

The Daily Beast had an interesting article about the immoral and unethical practice of evicting poor and disabled residents from nursing homes. “Complaints about allegedly improper evictions and discharges from nursing homes are on the rise in California, Illinois and other states, according to government data. These concerns are echoed in lawsuits and by ombudsmen and consumer advocates.” In California alone, such complaints have jumped 70 percent in five years, reaching 1,504 last year. Many patients end up with no permanent housing or regular medical care after being discharged.

Advocates say such decisions are often money-driven, placing profits over people: Medicare covers patients for just a short time after they are released from hospitals. After that, these critics say, many nursing homes don’t want to accept the lower rates paid by Medicaid, the public insurance program for low-income residents.

Among other recent cases of allegedly improper discharges:

*In October, California’s attorney general moved to prevent a Bakersfield nursing home administrator from working with elderly and disabled people, while he awaits trial on charges of elder abuse and wrongful discharge. State prosecutors said one patient was falsely informed that she owed the home money, then sent to an independent living center even though she could not “walk or toilet on her own.”

*A pending lawsuit by Maryland’s attorney general alleges a nursing home chain, Neiswanger Management Services (NMS), illegally evicted residents, sending them to homeless shelters or other inadequate facilities to free up bed space for higher-paying patients.

Federal law allows a nursing home to discharge or evict a patient when it cannot meet the resident’s needs or the person no longer requires services; if the resident endangers the health and safety of other individuals; or if the patient has failed, after reasonable and appropriate notice, to pay. The law also generally requires a home to provide 30 days’ notice before discharging a patient involuntarily and requires all discharges be safe and orderly.

U.S. News and other media outlets such as The Daily Mall have reported on the new report that shows an increase in medical doctors specializing in geriatric and nursing home care. The findings were published Nov. 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This is great news considering the aging of the Baby Boomers. According to the UPenn study, there are more than 15,000 nursing homes across the country, with a total of about 1.7 million beds. But there are currently 74.9 million baby boomers between the ages of 51 and 69, according to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center.

The number of physicians and health care providers concentrating on nursing home patients grew by about one-third between 2012 and 2015, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found.

Analyzing Medicare data, the researchers found that the number of doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who were nursing home specialists rose from about 5,100 in 2012 to more than 6,800 in 2015 — about 34 percent.

The Conversation reported on the epidemic of resident to resident assaults in nursing homes. Many preventable deaths in nursing homes are a result of aggression between residents. This most commonly occurs in people with dementia, their research has found. Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, they examined records for all resident-to-resident aggression-related deaths among nursing home residents reported to a coroner in Australia between 2000 and 2013.

Their study examined the frequency and nature of resident-to-resident aggression resulting in the most severe outcome – death. In their analysis, almost 90% of residents involved in resident-to-resident aggression had a diagnosis of dementia. Three-quarters had a history of behavioral problems, including wandering and verbal and physical aggression, which are common symptoms of dementia.

The rising global prevalence of dementia, particularly in the nursing home population, means aggressive behaviors between residents will increasingly be an issue. Two high-level reports on elder abuse in aged care in Australia have recommended better reporting systems so we can understand and prevent all such deaths in nursing homes.

Resident-to-resident aggression is an umbrella term that includes physical, verbal or sexual interactions that are considered to be negative, aggressive or intrusive. These behaviors can cause serious physical harm or psychological distress.

The prevalence of aggression between nursing home residents is difficult to determine. Recent research estimates at least 20% of nursing home residents in the US were involved in such incidents.

Most incidents appeared to be unprovoked, or were triggered by communication issues or a perceived invasion of personal space. Importantly, only one of the 18 studies reported a single death as the result of physical resident-to-resident aggression.

Our research found most exhibitors of aggression (85.7%) were male. The risk of death from aggression between residents was twice as high for male as for female residents. Those who exhibited aggression towards other residents were often younger and more recently admitted to the nursing home than their targets.

However, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg as there is much potential for underreporting and misclassification of resident-to-resident aggression deaths. We have limited data on how often incidents of aggression between residents in Australia occur but do not result in death.

WNCN reported that Natalia Mikhailovna Roberts has been accused of stealing medication. Warrants state Roberts worked as a nurse for Lake Emory Post Acute Care in Inman. Lake Emory is owned and operated by the national for profit chain Fundamental Long Term Care.

Authorities say there were 78 doses of Oxycodone for a patient when there should have been 96 doses. Warrants state Roberts “intentionally…omitted information” required for records keeping.

Records showed another patient was missing 124 doses of Hydrocodone on June 17, another arrest warrant states.

Roberts is charged with theft of a controlled substance and two counts of violating drug distribution laws by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. A temporary order of suspension has been issued for Roberts by the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

It is unclear if she was using the pills or selling them to make money. The investigation into why the facility failed to notice the missing opiods is ongoing.

“I am burning alive, I am burning alive,” Chapman kept saying, according to an investigative report from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. She suffered third-degree burns to her scalp, chest, neck and shoulders.

Chapman died May 15, two days after she caught fire while smoking unsupervised on a patio at NHC HealthCare. Her son, Dean Chapman filed the wrongful-death suit Oct. 23.

The suit claims the nursing home improperly left the disabled woman alone while she smoked without a special burn resistant apron that was supposed to protect her from ashes and dropped cigarettes. The suit also says the nursing home failed to adequately assess her ability to smoke unsupervised and detect changes in her mental and physical condition.

Chapman had dementia, and because of her paralysis, limited use of her legs and left arm. She was a longtime smoker. The nursing home performed eight “smoking assessments” for her between 2012 and March 17, 2017, the suit says. All of the assessments determined she could smoke without supervision, despite concern expressed by staff in October 2016 and the discovery of burn marks on her clothing in February, the suit adds.

In March, the nursing home did tell Chapman she had to wear a special smoking apron to protect her from hot ashes and dropped cigarettes. Despite concerns that her dementia was worsening and that burn marks continued to be found on her clothes, she was put on the back porch alone on May 13 without a smoking apron, the suit says.

Peimann, the nursing home administrator, told the Post-Dispatch in May that Chapman’s death was “a bad accident.”

David Terry, an attorney for Dean Chapman, said: “For a nursing home to provide a safe environment for its residents, there must be enough staff members to properly supervise the residents and the staff needs to be sufficiently trained to meet the needs of each resident. We believe in this case the NHC facility failed to do that.”

CNBC reported that Trump’s new tax plan removes an important deduction for nursing home residents. The Republican bill would repeal the medical expense deduction, which allows people who spend more than 10 percent of their income on out-of-pocket health costs to write them off.

The cost of living in a nursing home can easily run up to tens of thousands of dollars per year and wipe out the savings of elderly residents who are paying out of pocket. The deduction can be an important offset to taxes those Americans would owe on their retirement savings distributions.

“It tends to be mostly … older people who do not have long-term care insurance, and end up in a nursing home,” said Richard Kaplan, a professor who specializes in tax policy and elder law at the University of Illinois College of Law. “For people who are receiving long-term care and are paying for it themselves, this is going to be a huge deal,” said Kaplan.

“This would be a joke if the consequences weren’t so serious,” said Brad Woodhouse, campaign director of health-care advocacy group Protect Our Care, in a statement. “Republican leaders are determined to raise health-care costs for middle-class families who need it most — in this case people with high medical costs or those paying for long-term care.”

Public Opinion had an interesting article on how the nursing home industry is changing for the Baby Boomer generation. ““The entire senior living industry is in the midst of great change right now,” Menno Haven CEO Hugh Davis said. “The post-war generation, those born between 1945 and 1965, is the largest population wave this nation has ever seen, and they are now at retirement age and looking for senior living communities in waves. This shift is causing the entire industry to look at their products and services. These folks have grown up very differently than their World-War-II-era parents, and they have different wants and expectations.”

The need for short-term rehabilitation services such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy has increased. The goal is to prepare people to return home after a hospital stay for acute illness, traumatic injury or elective surgery. Local retirement communities already are moving to “small houses,” an innovative model for assisted living. The concept balances social interaction and privacy; with residents sharing a kitchen, living room and meals at a family-style dining room table.

Industry research shows these environments reduce anxiety, medication use and confusion in memory care residents.

Next Avenue had an interesting article on how 4 states have lowered nursing home admissions. Nursing home care is the most expensive form of long-term care. According to the 2017 Genworth Cost of Care report, a private room in a nursing home now costs an average of $97,455 per year. A semi-private room runs more than $85,000.

“If you are hospitalized at age 65 or older, there is a one in five chance you will be discharged to a nursing home. Certain states — like Minnesota, Maine, Oregon and Connecticut — have implemented policies that lower the chances of getting “stuck” in a nursing home, said Wendy Fox-Grage, a senior strategic policy advisory with the AARP Policy Institute and co-author of “State Strategies to Reduce the Risk of Long-Term Nursing Home Care After Hospitalization.” The new report, released Oct. 6, highlights some of those innovative policies.

Minnesota: ‘Return to Community’

Minnesota uses “community living specialists” to work with older adults to get them back to their communities. The community living specialists, who are nurses or social workers, assist the nursing home to identify new residents who may want to return home. Then, after the residents return home, the community living specialists follow up with them to make sure they are getting the services and support they need over the following months.

Another Minnesota initiative lauded in the report is its Performance-Based Incentive Payment Program. This program rewards nursing homes with incentive payments for designing projects to lower their numbers of long-term residents.

Oregon: Downsizing Nursing Homes

Oregon does a better-than-average job of keeping people out of nursing homes by providing services in the community: just 3.3 percent of state residents age 85 and older live in nursing homes. (The national average is 9.5 percent, according to the AARP report.)

A 2013 law provided a financial incentive for nursing homes to buy another facility and then take the excess capacity out of use — a process known as “buy and close.” Some providers have diversified into hospice care, assisted living, home health and independent living, the report said.

Connecticut: Home Care for Older Adults

Connecticut’s Home Care Program for Elders provides financial assistance for home care services so older adults can delay or avoid going to a nursing home. There are varying levels of service depending on a person’s financial resources, but unlike other programs, those who don’t qualify for Medicaid are not automatically excluded.

The services may include housekeeping, companion services, home-delivered meals, a personal emergency response system, adult day care, assisted living, mental health counseling and minor home modifications. Family caregivers can receive payments of between $42.58 and $107.06 per day.

The program “represents a significant state investment in the delivery of home care services to people who, despite being at risk for nursing home admission, do not qualify for Medicaid,” the report said.

Maine: Getting to People Early

Maine has been working since the 1990s to limit nursing home admissions to the people who most need them, according to the report. It does that, in part, by mandating medical assessments before admission. Maine also provides prospective residents and their families with a “community plan of care,” which gives information about services they may be able to use instead of going to a nursing home.

The program also provides individuals with a service plan that has estimates of how much the home care services will cost. The service plan doubles as an authorization for payment by Medicaid, if the person qualifies, or the state-funded home- and community-based care services program.